Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells Transfected with Distal-Less Homeobox 2 Gene Promote Articular Cartilage Repair after Injury

Abstract

To investigate the repair effect of distal-less homeobox 2 transfected bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells on knee cartilage injury. 20 male New Zealand large eared rabbits aged 6 to 7 mo were selected and fed for 1 w to undergo knee cartilage injury modeling surgery. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, western blot and hematoxylin-eosin staining were used to detect these related indicators. Behavioral scores and cartilage repair in each group of large rabbits was calculated. The Wakitani total score showed a very significant level of improvement in the repair of knee cartilage damage in New Zealand rabbits in the distal-less homeobox 2 transfected and bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells groups (p<0.01). Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction results showed that after 4 and 8 w intervention, the messenger RNA levels were significantly increased (p<0.01). Western blot results showed that 4 and 8 w after surgery, the expression of type I collagen, type II collagen and proteoglycan aggrecan proteins were significantly increased. The injection of simple bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells could promote the repair of cartilage damage and the distal-less homeobox 2 transfected mesenchymal stem cells had the best repair effect after 8 w, indicating that the distal-less homeobox 2 gene could regulate the proliferation and differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells and promote the repair of damage in a long period of time.